What surprised me most was The Softening

The past few months, I felt called to focus deeply on my inner child healing. The timing simply felt right for me to take this step, and to do so with devotion. The intention was simple: To live my best life, I cannot continue being held back by things of old. It just wears you down, dragging that baggage around. And while I’ve done been doing inner work for more than a decade, this still remained.

I know silver-haired folks who still harbour grief, resentment, bitterness, and anger over incidents from the black-and-white era, so much so that you can feel the rawness in their stories. I remember thinking very clearly: I do not want that for myself.

So I surrendered fully to this round of healing. And somehow, the right conversations, practices, meditations, and connections seemed to appear at exactly the right time. I leaned deeply into my own daily practices, and also sought support from those I trust most to hold space for me during this vulnerable period.

Much of the journey brought me face-to-face with difficult relationships with certain family members who, through their own struggles and unresolved pain, made me an outlet for their suffering.

The process dredged up an awful lot of painful memories, including some I didn’t consciously remember. This round, I chose to stay with each excruciatingly unpleasant emotion and sensation as they surfaced.

What surprised me most was the softening that came through.

As I breathed, really deep, breaths, through the difficult memories, and slowly made space for more understanding within myself, other memories began surfacing too. Small moments where these very people had shown some form of care or tenderness — perhaps we could call them unpolished attempts at love.

Honestly, those moments weren’t many. But they were real.

And somehow, the remembrance of them softened and lightened something inside me.

I don’t know if I could ever fully release the hurt, and that’s okay. It’s not my intent. My intent is to move through life without being held back by it.

Mentally, I had reasoned a fair bit of it away a long time ago. But your heart cannot be reasoned with, can it?

But now, because those emotions no longer grip me in the same way, I feel so much freer. My heart feels lighter. My body feels lighter too. And alongside the hurt, I’ve begun to feel a newfound inner spaciousness and the quiet budding of understanding.

I know many who came before us wore armour shaped by experiences they never had the safety or support to heal from. Understanding that, though, does not erase the impact, and a big part of me still wishes they had chosen differently.

But this process reminded me that we are all living a deeply human experience. And for now, I’m grateful to hold the gentler memories too.

So maybe healing isn’t about erasing the hurt, but creating enough spaciousness within ourselves to keep living fully alongside it.

Thank you for reading and sharing this space with me.